Footnotes

Footnotes are a simple way to leave a reference in your text to a note at the bottom of the page. Footnotes come with their limitations, but with a little fine-tuning you have total control over their appearance. Learn the variations you can use to create your footnotes and how to adjust them to meet your needs in Word with the following articles.

Tips, Tricks, and Answers

The following articles are available for the 'Footnotes' topic. Click the
article''s title (shown in bold) to see the associated article.

Adding Footnotes to Endnotes
Word does footnotes. Word does endnotes. Word doesn't do footnotes within endnotes. Here's a discussion as to why and what you might do about it.

Automatically Adding Tabs in Footnotes
When you add a footnote to a document, Word's normal formatting adds a space after the footnote number and before the body of the footnote. You may want Word to use a tab instead of the space. There are a couple of ways you can approach this problem, as discussed in this tip.

Brackets around Footnote References
When you insert footnotes in a document, Word allows you to modify the formatting applied to the footnote references. What it doesn't allow is for you to specify any extra characters that should be included with the reference. Here's a way you can add any extra characters you want, such as a set of brackets.

Changing How Footnote References Appear
Footnote references normally appear as superscripted digits, both in the main body of your document and in the footnotes area. Unfortunately, changing them is not that easy. If you want them to appear differently, then you need to apply some workarounds as described in this tip.

Changing the Footnote Continuation Notice
When a footnote needs to span two printed pages, Word prints a continuation notice at the end of the footnote being continued. This tip explains how you can change the wording in that notice.

Changing the Footnote Continuation Separator
When you add a really long footnote to a document, it could be that the entire footnote might not fit on the page where the footnote reference appears. If that is the case, Word continues the footnote to a subsequent page. You can control the separator that is used for such continuations.

Changing the Footnote Separator
When you print a document that uses footnotes, Word normally places a small line between the end of the document body text and the start of the footnotes on the page. You can change this line to anything you want by following the steps in this tip.

Changing the Way Footnotes Are Numbered
Most footnotes in a document start numbering with the number 1 and proceed from there through the rest of your document. It doesn't have to be that way, though. You can customize the way that your footnotes appear by using the information in this tip.

Continuous Formatting for Footnotes
If you've got a lot of short footnotes in a document, you might be looking for a way to save space by "crunching up" the footnotes by running them together in a single paragraph on each page. This tip explores why this can't be easily done in Word.

Controlling Footnote Placement
Footnotes are normally placed at the bottom of the page on which the footnote is referenced. However, Word provides some flexibility on the actual placement of the note on the printed page. This tip discusses the options you have.

Converting Footnotes to Endnotes
When you spend a lot of time creating footnotes, how can you convert all of them to endnotes without entering them all again? It's easy to do if you follow the steps in this tip.

Converting Individual Endnotes and Footnotes
Word makes it easy to convert all your footnotes to endnotes and vice versa. You may want to only convert a couple of them, and the key to doing this is discussed in this tip.

Copying and Moving Footnotes
Want to get your footnotes from one place to another in a document, or even from one document to another document? It's easy to do if you apply the editing techniques you are already familiar with.

Copying and Moving Footnotes and Endnotes
If you need to move footnotes or endnotes from one location to another in a document, you can use editing techniques you already know. You can also use the same techniques to copy the notes.

Correctly Numbering Footnotes in a Chapter
Word is very flexible when it comes to adding footnotes to your document. If you have multiple sections within that document, you can modify the settings used for numbering footnotes for every one of those sections.

Creating a Bibliography from Footnotes
Most scholarly papers need to have both footnotes and a bibliography. The two are closely related, as they provide different views of the resources consulted in compiling the paper. Word doesn't allow you to automatically create a bibliography from your footnotes, but there are a few things you can try to make the creation process easier.

Deleting All Footnotes
Tired of all those footnotes hanging on the bottom of each page in your document? You can get rid of them in one step, as described in this tip.

Deleting Footnotes and Endnotes
Deleting either footnotes or endnotes is a simple process. Just select the reference mark and delete it. Assuming you are using automatically numbered notes, the remaining notes are renumbered for you, as if the deleted note had never existed.

Footnotes Don't Automatically Renumber
Editing a document can, at times, be hard work. It isn't made easier if you feel that Word is "fighting" you on some tasks, like deleting footnotes. If you make a footnote deletion and the remaining footnotes don't renumber, there are a few things you can (and should) check out.

Footnotes for Chapters
Word allows you to add footnotes to your documents and configure how they are numbered. Sometimes the numbering can get a bit confusing based on your document organization. Here's how to get the numbering you need when your document has lots of different sections in it.

Footnotes for Tables
Word includes a powerful feature that allows you to add footnotes and endnotes to your document. What if you want them at the bottom of a table, however? There are a couple of approaches you can try, as described in this tip.

Footnotes in Two Columns
When laying out how your printed pages will look, you might want to place your footnotes into more than one column. The best way to approach this issue depends on the version of Word you are using.

Footnotes within Footnotes
Need to add footnotes to your footnotes? It's actually allowed by some style guides, but Word doesn't make it so easy.

Formatting Footnote and Endnote References
Depending on whom you are writing for, you may want your footnote and endnote references to appear a specific way. Word allows you to easily change basic reference formatting, but more extensive changes may require macros or manual manipulation.

Formatting Footnote Reference Marks
The reference marks that appear for footnotes in a document are normally just superscripted digits. If you want to change the formatting used for these references, you can do so by simply changing one of the default character styles in Word.

Formatting Footnotes and Endnotes
Footnotes and endnotes can be formatted in the same way that you format regular text in your document. There is an easier way to do the formatting, howeverâ€"use styles.

Getting Rid of Hyperlinks in Footnotes
When you add hyperlinks to a document, Word makes them active, meaning you can click them to open the target of the hyperlink. If you want to get rid of the hyperlinks that may appear in footnotes, this tip is for you.

Heavy-Duty Footnotes
Word allows you to add footnotes to a document, but they are rather straightforward and simple in their application. If you have a need for more complex footnotes, you may need to consider a workaround, as described in this tip.

IEEE Citation Format
Different style guides describe different ways of formatting information that appears in a document. One such style guide is that used by the IEEE organization. If you need your work to reflect this style guide, you'll appreciate the ideas in this tip.

Including Footnotes and Endnotes in Word Counts
When you have Word calculate how many words there are in a document, it normally doesn't pay attention to text in footnotes and endnotes. If you want these words counted in the total, here's how to get the proper count.

Inserting and Deleting Footnotes
Footnotes are essential in some types of writing. When you need to add footnotes to your documents, you'll appreciate the helpful information in this tip.

Inserting Footnotes
Footnotes appear at the bottom (or foot) of each page. It is an easy task to insert a footnote at any point you desire, as described in this tip.

Inserting Footnotes Using Custom Footnote Marks
Automatic footnotes are easy to insert in Word documents. The default settings are usually fine for most projects. However, you might want to create your own special type of footnote mark. This tip explains how to do this.

Jumping to a Footnote
Jumping to a specific footnote can be very handy if your document has a lot of footnotes in it. Word provides the capability to move to the footnote location; just use the technique described in this tip.

Jumping to a Relative Footnote
Footnotes can be a great addition to any document that needs detailed referencing of citations. You can navigate from one footnote to another by using the Find and Replace dialog box.

Mixing Note Numbering
When inserting footnotes and endnotes in a document, most of us don't give much thought to the format used in the numbering of those notes. You can, however, modify the format used. If you want to mix different types of numbers in your notes, it is possible, but not without some changes to how you put your document together.

Moving Footnote Text into the Document
Need to move the contents of a footnote up into the main body of your document? You can use normal editing techniques to do the move, or you can apply a simple macro that does it all for you.

Positioning the Footnote Separator
The Footnote Separator, as its name implies, separates the footnotes on each page from the text on that page. If the separator isn't horizontally positioned to your liking, you'll appreciate the guidance in this tip.

Printing without Footnotes
Want to print your document without all those footnotes included? It's not quite as easy as you might think, as this tip discloses.

Problems Using the Footnote Pane
When working with footnotes in Draft view, you rely on the use of the footnote pane. However, the pane doesn't work exactly the same as it did in earlier versions of Word.

Reference to a Range of Endnotes
When multiple endnote references are used at a given point in your document, you may wonder if there is a way to compress those multiple references to instead display a range. There is no inherent way, but you can get around that lack of capability by using the techniques in this tip.

Resolving Tracked Changes in Footnotes or Endnotes
Track Changes is a great tool that can aid in developing a document. If you have footnotes or endnotes in a document that uses Track Changes, you may be wondering how you can accept (or reject) just the changes in those notes. Here's how.

Sequentially Numbering Footnotes
If you have a document with lots of footnotes, you might notice that some of those footnotes are not in numerical order, like they should be. It could be due to the way the footnotes are formatted. Here's how to fix it.

Standardizing Note Reference Placement
Want to modify where an endnote or footnote reference appears in relation to the punctuation in a sentence? Here's a way you can make changes using Word's Find and Replace tool.

Turning Off Printing of Document Properties
Getting to a printed document is often the entire purpose of using Word. The program, however, allows you to print out additional information besides your document. One such thing is the document properties that Word maintains. If you don't want these properties printed, here's how to turn them off.

Understanding Footnotes and Endnotes
Footnotes and endnotes are often used in scholarly and formal writing as a way to provide additional information about a topic, without breaking up the flow of your text. Word allows you control over which type of note you use, and where that note is placed.

Using Cross-References in Footnotes
Need to make a cross-reference from one footnote to another footnote? You can do it if you throw bookmarks into the mix, as described in this tip.

Viewing Footnotes
Adding footnotes to a document is essential for some types of writing. How you view those footnotes depends on the display mode you are using for your document.

Viewing Footnotes and Endnotes
Footnotes and endnotes are normally visible with the rest of your document, but such visibility is dependant on which viewing mode you are using. This tip explains how to display notes in a variety of viewing modes.